Russian market of financial services: social studies, statistics and publications. №6(10), June 2017

23 August 2017

In the new age of global digitalisation and hi-tech developments, there appear newer and more modern services and products on the financial service market. Process automation, switchover to remote service channels and assimilation of experience from the developed economies promotes the situation, whereby financial institutes in Russia, implement their new services very quickly and in many cases without reference to the consumers. The specific development experienced in our country, coupled with the economic conditions of the last few years have resulted in a situation where not all Russians are fully educated, and have no practical experience of using financial products and services. The financial behaviour of citizens is, to a large extent irrational and the level of financial literacy unbalanced across the vast territory of our country.Of particular concern is that the rational and logical financial behaviour of our citizens, is the basis of nation’s future financial prosperity and it can successfully promote and development of financial segment of the country’s economics.

Public authorities are confronted with a task to develop a comfortable environment for financial institutions and different non-commercial organisations and for citizens when they use financial products and services. The main characteristics that the public authorities need to incorporate into the development of successful environment, are set to become: from one side – financial services that are easily accessible to all categories of citizens, transparency of conditions tariffs and rates and a method of regulation in order to secure the safety of financial products - and from the other side – to implement and to make available to citizens a high level of financial knowledge and education, which will give the population the correct tools to practice intelligent and rational financial behaviour. The program and eventual achievement of building conditions for financial prosperity, has a fundamental benefit today, both for citizens and financial market participants for the whole state.

The present review includes the results of the Analytical Centre NAFI, which have been conducting a program of open studies during the last six months. These are the materials of all Russian sociological researches, studying the level of banking products and services usage amongst citizens and business representatives. It also incorporates the analysis of official market statistics, expert evaluations and content review of the thematic mass media. This review will allow us to get an insight about the tendency of the banking services market to forecast its further development and to adopt the appropriate management decisions.

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